love through the lens - kate martin

first day

monday, may 6th, 2024

"Why don't you introduce yourself." Coach says.

"My name is Frankie Hayes, I use she/her pronouns, and I'm the new team photographer. I might ask you all for some pictures from time to time, but the rest of the time you can pretend I'm not here."

"Why would we do that? You're a human being." A'ja tilts her head.

"I just mean don't let me be a distraction." Frankie nods, a bit embarrassed.

"Thank you, Miss Hayes." Becky smiles, her hand on my shoulder.

"Oh, please! You can call me Frankie. Or Hayes also works."

"Alright, Frankie. Anything you need from us today?"

"No, thank you. It's experiment day for me so I'll be messing around with different lenses to see what I like best. Like I said, you can just- you know."

"We look forward to seeing your work." Becky exclaims and Frankie heads over to her set up.

The coaches talk to the players while Frankie argues with herself about which lens she should try first. Still listening to her coaches, Kate Martin looks over at the girl. She can tell by the look on her face, there's some inner turmoil going on. Frankie shakes her head, shrugs and pulls a lens out from her case.

Kate looks away and focuses before starting warm-ups with the team. Frankie gets closer to the team and starts taking pictures. She huffs and rolls her eyes. She quickly realizes she should have gone with the other lens to begin with. She stands up, shaking her head and walks over to her equipment and switches out the lenses, going back to her original spot.

She takes hundreds throughout practice. It'll take her hours to go through and find the best ones but, that's her job. Practice ends and everyone disperses. Well, that's not really true. The whole team heads to the locker room and everyone else heads to presumably their offices. Frankie stays in the gym, packing everything up, looking at a few pictures, quite happy with some of the results.

"What are you doing?" A voice scares Frankie. It's Kate Martin.

"Shit!" Frankie yells, jumping, "Oh, I'm packing up. Stopped for a sec to see if anything I got today is of any value."

"And?"

"Huh?" Frankie furrows  her brows.

"Did you get anything of value?"

"I think so. Wanna look?"

"Sure."

"I assume you know how to work this thing? Right arrow, next picture. Left arrow, former picture."

"Yeah, smart ass, I know how buttons work." Kate laughs.

"Oh, sorry." Frankie says quietly.

"Don't be. I'm just messing with you. Probably inappropriate to call you a smart ass when I've only known you for 3 and a half hours. My bad."

"It's okay. Any other day I probably would have played along."

"Rough day?"

"Not really, no. Just nervous. This is a pretty huge job and someone put their word on me. Just don't want to mess it up."

"Well," Kate goes through a couple of photos, "I'd say you're doing really good so far. These are pretty cool." She hands the camera back to it's owner.

"Thanks. The first ones are rough. Wrong lens, should've trusted my gut because originally I chose the right one. Andddd I'm probably boring you to death with camera talk." Frankie chuckles nervously, putting the camera back in the case.